The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to nondestructive testing systems, and more particularly, to ultrasonic tomography systems for nondestructive testing.
Many industrial inspection applications rely on imaging techniques to determine the quality of industrial parts, such as pipes, pipe arrays, and so forth. For example, such inspection techniques may be utilized to determine the presence and/or location of one or more defects in an object, such as the presence of cracks, cavities, or other imperfections. One imaging modality that may be utilized to inspect objects for the presence of defects is ultrasonic tomography. Ultrasonic tomography is an imaging modality that employs ultrasound waves to probe the acoustic properties of the object of interest and to produce a corresponding image of the object, including any detectable defects. Generation of sound wave pulses and the detection of returning echoes is typically accomplished via transducers located in a transducer probe. Transducer probes typically include electromechanical elements that are capable of converting electrical energy into mechanical energy for transmission and that also are capable of converting mechanical energy back into electrical energy for receiving purposes.
Unfortunately, in some applications, the size of the defects relative to the size of the inspected object is relatively small, which makes it difficult to detect their presence in the reconstructed image of the inspected object. Furthermore, in many instances, multiple small defects may be spaced closely together, and while the combined area of the defects may be detectable via ultrasonic inspection, the size of each individual defect may be below the resolution of the system. Since the ability to identify defects present in the object is largely a function of the quality and resolution of the resulting image of the object, there exists a need for improved systems that overcome the aforementioned drawbacks.